The Biden-Yoon Summit: Where Does Japan Figure?
I would like tentatively to share the insights of Dr. Jagannath Panda, Japan Forum for Strategic Studies Senior Research Fellow, Head of the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security and Development Policy.
Japan and South Korea are the linchpins of the US security and diplomatic policy in the Indo-Pacific. However, their historically fraught relations have perpetually frustrated the US efforts. After the ties reached a new low in 2019 – the worst in recent years since normalization in 1965 – as Japan removed the Republic of Korea (ROK) from a whitelist of preferred trading partners, and in response, the ROK contemplated pulling the plug on the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), the relations continued to decline, with even Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida calling them as being “in a severe condition.” Despite the optimism with Yoon Suk-yeol's election win this year, the relations are still in a state of quandary, posing a potential security nightmare for the United States that is struggling to maintain its dominance in the region against a belligerently ascendant China.
